For an untold number of years, protecting foodstuffs from animals such as rodents has been a problem. Traps, poisoned baits, physical barriers and even chemical barriers of all sorts have been utilized. The precise form in which they have been utilized depends, of course, upon the particular environment in which the foodstuffs to be protected is located.
One commonly used approach of a gardener desiring to keep, for example, rabbits out of a vegetable or flower garden is to erect a chemical barrier about the periphery of the garden. Not untypically, the chemical barrier would be made up of common mothballs set in the soil about the periphery of the garden. The vapors given off by the mothballs are apparently quite repulsive to rabbits and other rodents as well as to reptiles and thus serve as an excellent chemical barrier repelling their entry into the protected area.
A couple of difficulties attend the use of this type of barrier. For one, human traffic into and out of the garden may result in the continuity of the barrier being broken. For example, several adjacent mothballs might be kicked to one side by a person entering or leaving the protected area, thereby leaving a gap in the barrier through which rodents and/or reptiles might enter.
Secondly, this sort of chemical approach is not readily usable indoors because the unconstrained mothballs are, in a word, messy.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the above problems.